Corrugated Architecture of the Okanagan Valley Shear Zone and the Shuswap Metamorphic Complex, Canadian Cordillera
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Corrugated architecture of the Okanagan Valley shear zone and the Shuswap metamorphic complex, Canadian Cordillera Sarah R. Brown1,2,*, Graham D.M. Andrews1,3, and H. Daniel Gibson2 1DEPARTMENT OF GEOLOGICAL SCIENCES, CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY–BAKERSFIELD, 9001 STOCKDALE HIGHWAY, BAKERSFIELD, CALIFORNIA 93311, USA 2DEPARTMENT OF EARTH SCIENCE, SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY, 8888 UNIVERSITY DRIVE, BURNABY, BRITISH COLUMBIA V5A 1S6, CANADA 3DEPARTMENT OF GEOLOGY AND GEOGRAPHY, WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY, 98 BEECHURST AVENUE, MORGANTOWN, WEST VIRGINIA 26506, USA ABSTRACT The distribution of tectonic superstructure across the Shuswap metamorphic complex of southern British Columbia is explained by east-west– trending corrugations of the Okanagan Valley shear zone detachment. Geological mapping along the southern Okanagan Valley shear zone has identified 100-m-scale to kilometer-scale corrugations parallel to the extension direction, where synformal troughs hosting upper-plate units are juxtaposed between antiformal ridges of crystalline lower-plate rocks. Analysis of available structural data and published geological maps of the Okanagan Valley shear zone confirms the presence of≤ 40-km-wavelength corrugations, which strongly influence the surface trace of the detachment system, forming spatially extensive salients and reentrants. The largest reentrant is a semicontinuous belt of late Paleozoic to Mesozoic upper-plate rocks that link stratigraphy on either side of the Shuswap metamorphic complex. Previously, these belts were considered by some to be autochthonous, implying minimal motion on the Okanagan Valley shear zone (≤12 km); conversely, our results suggest that they are allochthonous (with as much as 30–90 km displacement). Corrugations extend the Okanagan Valley shear zone much farther east than previously recognized and allow for hitherto separate gneiss domes and detachments to be reconstructed together to form a single, areally extensive Okanagan Valley shear zone across the Shuswap metamorphic complex. If this correlation is correct, the Okanagan Valley shear zone may have enveloped the entire Shuswap metamorphic complex as far east as the east-vergent Columbia River–Slocan Lake fault zones. LITHOSPHERE; v. 8; no. 4; p. 412–421 | Published online online 21 June 2016 doi:10.1130/L524.1 INTRODUCTION the shear zone (Spencer and Reynolds, 1991). Some corrugations within core complexes in southwest Arizona can be followed for up to 40 km Ductile shear zones are rarely planar across large areas (Candela et al., parallel to the extension direction (Spencer and Reynolds, 1991). Late- 2009). Nonplanar geometry is manifested by linear features normal to the stage doming of the detachment surface causes corrugations to become strike of the mean plane and parallel to the direction of slip, e.g., slickenlines, doubly plunging and to produce a dome-and-basin structural topography mullions, and, at the largest scales, corrugations. Corrugations differ from (Fletcher et al., 1995). slickenlines and mullions in that they are large enough (with wavelengths of Corrugations are typically recognized by map-scale features (Fig. 1), hundreds of meters to tens of kilometers) to deform the entire shear zone and including: (1) sinuous detachment fault traces; (2) juxtaposed antiforms the rocks of the adjacent upper plate and lower plate. Corrugations are com- and synforms, which result in a convolute map trace of shear zone salients mon in extensional shear zones and metamorphic core complexes in both and reentrants, respectively; and (3) klippen of upper-plate rocks with continental and oceanic crust (Whitney et al., 2013), suggesting a genetic spoon-shaped geometries isolated on top of the surrounding lower plate link between the formation of core complexes and corrugated detachments (Chauvet and Sérrane, 1994; Frost et al., 1996) and elongated parallel to (Singleton, 2013). Corrugations have been recognized on detachments in the transport direction. The juxtaposition of alternating ridges of resis- the southwest United States (John, 1987; Spencer and Reynolds, 1991; tant lower-plate rocks with keels of recessive upper-plate rocks affects Davis et al., 1993; Mancktelow and Palvis, 1994; Frost et al., 1996; Fowler the topographic expression of the detachment surface so that structurally and Calzia, 1999; Singleton, 2013), Baja California, Mexico (Seiler et al., lower units are topographically higher. 2010, 2011), western Norway (Johnston and Hacker, 2005), the Aegean Sea Corrugations may form during the exhumation of core complexes, and (Wawrzenitz and Krohe, 1998), the Swiss Alps (Mancktelow and Palvis, some precede brittle deformation and cooling below the Curie temperature 1994), Papua New Guinea (Spencer, 2010; Daczko et al., 2011), central (Livaccari et al., 1995), whereas others form primarily in the brittle regime. Sulawesi (Spencer, 2010), the Himalaya (Murphy and Copeland, 2005; The origins of corrugations (Singleton, 2013) include: (1) uniaxial (s1 = Spencer, 2010), the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (Tucholke et al., 1998), and the s2 > s3; e.g., Fletcher and Bartley, 1994) and triaxial strain (s1 > s2 > s3; Philippine Sea (Harigane et al., 2008; Spencer and Ohara, 2013). Fig. 1; e.g., Fossen et al., 2013), resulting in horizontal shortening per- Corrugations are upright or steeply inclined, open, parallel folds of pendicular to the extension direction; (2) synemplacement warping of the detachment shear zones (Fig. 1), typically with wavelengths of 200 m surface by plutons or diapiric gneiss domes; and (3) rheological contrasts to 20 km and amplitudes of 30–2000 m. The fold axes of corrugations between upper- and lower-plate rocks. The importance of triaxial strain are characteristically parallel to the principal stretching lineation within regimes and high viscosity contrasts (~600:1) has been demonstrated in experiments, especially under transtension (e.g., Grujic and Mancktelow, *[email protected] 1995; Venkat-Ramani and Tikoff, 2002; Le Pourhiet et al., 2012). 412 © 2016 Geological Society of Americawww.gsapubs.org | For permission | toVolume copy, contact8 | Number [email protected] 4 | LITHOSPHERE Downloaded from http://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/lithosphere/article-pdf/8/4/412/3040331/412.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 Corrugated architecture of the Okanagan Valley shear zone, Canadian Cordillera | RESEARCH syn-extensional break-away fault deposits σ1 σ3 allochthonous hanging wall superstructure half-graben detachment fault antiformal mylonite zone corrugation autochthonous infrastructure σ2 synformal corrugation & re-entrant hanging wall half-graben klippe PLAN VIEW upper plate σ2 mylonite zone lower plate X detachment σ fault 1 σ3 Figure 1. Schematic model of a corrugated detachment and core complex, adapted from Fossen (2010). Note the presence of upper-plate rocks preserved on the corrugated detachment surface as klippen and reentrants, and the curvilinear surface trace of the detachment. This paper describes synextensional corrugations of the Okanagan Val- belong to both the parautochthonous Kootenay terrane within the Omin- ley shear zone, which forms part of the western boundary of the Shuswap eca morphogeologic belt (Fig. 2, inset) and the accreted Quesnel terrane metamorphic complex in the southern Canadian Cordillera (Fig. 2). We within the Intermontane belt (Okulitch, 1979; Gabrielse et al., 1991). Some used field observations and analysis of geological maps to demonstrate Eocene rocks were deposited directly onto exhumed basement (Glombick how kilometer-scale corrugations influence the surface trace of the Okana- et al., 1999). Late, high-angle normal faults disrupt the Okanagan Val- gan Valley shear zone, and how they control the distributions of hanging- ley shear zone and locally juxtapose lower-plate rocks against the upper wall (upper-plate) and footwall (lower-plate) lithologies. We then applied plate, including at the margins of the horst-like Kettle–Grand Forks and this knowledge to examine competing models of the tectonostratigraphic Valhalla gneiss domes (Fig. 2). architecture of rocks in the upper plate of the Shuswap metamorphic Although the Okanagan Valley shear zone appears to be an important complex and to reconcile different estimates of crustal extension across bounding structure along which significant exhumation of the Shuswap the Okanagan Valley shear zone. metamorphic complex was accommodated, the magnitude of extension across the Okanagan Valley shear zone is widely debated (e.g., Whitney GEOLOGICAL SETTING et al., 2013). Estimates of the magnitude of extension across the shear zone vary from 0 to 90 km, without any along-strike correlation to latitude The Shuswap metamorphic complex is the largest metamorphic core (Brown et al., 2012, and references therein). In some areas, for example, complex in North America (Coney, 1980), and it underpins the southern between 49°N and 49°30′N, at Kelowna, and north of 51°45′N (Fig. 2), Canadian Cordillera in British Columbia and adjacent parts of Washington extension is estimated at 30–90 km based on shear zone geometry, the State (Fig. 2; Armstrong, 1982; Parrish et al., 1988). The western margin of depth from which lower-plate rocks were exhumed, and possible Eocene the Shuswap metamorphic complex was exhumed from midcrustal levels magmatic pinning points (e.g., Tempelman-Kluit and Parkinson, 1986; in the Eocene along a 450-km-long, west-dipping, low-angle detachment Bardoux, 1993; Johnson and Brown, 1996; Brown et al., 2012). In contrast, system (Johnson